Cisco Unity
® Connection is a feature-rich voice messaging platform based on the same Linux Unified Communications Operating System as Cisco Unified Communications Manager. With Cisco Unity Connection, you can access voice messages using Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, or use the display on your Cisco Unified IP Phone to view, search, sort, and play messages. Cisco Unity Connection also provides robust Automated-Attendant functions that include intelligent call routing and easily customizable call screen and message notification options.

Features and Benefits

Powerful Voice Messaging

At its core, Cisco Unity Connection is a powerful voice messaging system with many advanced capabilities that you can customize to maximize your individual and team productivity. You can personalize communications options and interact with the system to manage calls and messages in the way that is most comfortable and convenient for you. The flexible user interface makes messaging more efficient for "power users" and occasional voicemail users alike. For example, you can even customize your telephone user interface (TUI) and touchtone mappings to make migration from traditional voicemail systems much easier.

Speech-Enabled Messaging

To maximize the productivity of mobile workers, Cisco Unity Connection offers a natural and robust speech-activated user interface. This interface allows you to browse and manage your voice messages and to call other Cisco Unity Connection users or personal contacts using simple, natural speech commands.

– Use the integrated media player to play and delete messages directly from the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator client.

– Easily access presence and availability information about the person you are calling in the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator client; then click to call the person back and escalate to web chat, video, or other multimedia session.

Cisco Unity Connection allows you to customize your personal settings from a web browser using the Cisco Unity Connection Assistant, a dynamic interface in the browser-based Cisco Personal Communications Assistant (PCA). You can quickly and easily establish or change personal settings such as your voicemail options, security codes, personal distribution lists, and message-delivery options. You can also use the web administration interface to define and manage personal call-transfer rules to customize the delivery of incoming calls based on caller, time of day, or calendar status.

Simplified Installation, Configuration, and Maintenance

Running on the Cisco Linux-based appliance platform, Cisco Unity Connection uses a common set of management and serviceability tools designed to provide a consistent experience and to streamline the ongoing management and operation of a Cisco Unified Communications System.

Table 1 lists more features and benefits of Cisco Unity Connection 7.1.

• Cisco Unity Connection supports digital networking for up to 50,000 users within an enterprise and up to 10 servers or active-active cluster server pairs, including cross-server login, cross-server transfer, and cross-server live replay.

• You can use a single phone number for both voice calls and fax transmissions.

• Voice Message Store and Forward is a feature that enables administrators, on a per-user basis, to forward voice messages to an external mailbox, making it easier for you to access voice messages on a mobile device.

Message Access from the TUI

• Play and process messages (repeat, reply, forward, delete, save, mark as new, hear day or time stamp, or skip to the next message).

• Reverse, pause, or fast forward messages during playback.

• Control volume and speed during message playback.

• Pause or resume during message recording.

• Address messages to multiple recipients.

• With the message locator, search for messages by caller ID, name, or extension in saved messages.

• Record messages and mark them as regular, urgent, private, or secure.

• Record messages and request a return receipt.

• Record a live conversation with a caller and have the recording sent to your mailbox.

• Switch between spelling name and extension when addressing a message.

• With live reply, immediately reply to messages from other users.

• Access email messages over the phone using the Text to Speech (TTS) feature (for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007).

• When TTS is enabled, a conversation tells you if the message has attachments; when an attachment is in a playable or readable format, the attachment will be played or read.

• Record and then address a message, or address and then record a message.

• Record a message for future delivery.

• Record up to five personal greetings (alternative, busy, internal, off hours, or standard).

• Manage an alternative greeting; set the expiration date or time, notify users when an alternative greeting is set, or require callers to listen to the full alternative greeting.

• Forward calls directly to an alternative greeting (or other personal greeting) without ringing the phone.

• Specify an after-greeting action; after a user greeting, callers can leave a message, sign in, or hang up, or they can be sent to call handlers, directory handlers, interview handlers, or other users.

• Use flex stack to specify the order in which messages are presented over the phone: by urgency and then by last in, first out (LIFO) or first in, first out (FIFO).

• Create private distribution lists and address messages to them through the TUI or GUI.

• Provide message notification for new messages through devices such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Short Message Service (SMS), text pagers, and phone destinations.

• With a cascade message-notification feature, send additional notification types if a message is not retrieved.

• Send notifications for messages from a particular user or phone number.

• View and play back messages using Visual Voicemail on Cisco Unified IP Phones. Use softkeys on Cisco Unified IP Phones to access all messages, new messages, or messages from a specific subscriber or outside caller.

• Through calendar integration with Cisco Unified MeetingPlace® 7.0, join a meeting that is in progress, hear a list of participants for a meeting, send a message to the meeting organizer or participants, and set up an immediate meeting.

• Dispatch a message to a group, with the message being assigned to the first member of the group to listen to the message. When the message is assigned, it is deleted from all other users' inboxes and becomes a normal message in the assignee's mailbox.

• You have flexibility with support for partitions, search spaces, and search scopes.

• Receive and forward fax messages through integration with the Cisco Fax Server.

• Customize subject lines for messages received in any visual client that displays the subject message, such as an IMAP or RSS client.

• Use a single phone number for both voice calls and fax transmissions.

• With the Voice Message Store and Forward feature, administrators, on a per-user basis, can forward voice messages to an external mailbox, making it easier for you to access voice messages on a mobile device.

All user and interoperability functions are now offered under a single, low-cost user license that you can use for either voicemail or integrated messaging. Additionally, port and session capacity and failover redundancy licensing is available in two versions: 24 ports or sessions and 144 ports or sessions.

This product is a part of Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing. Please visit
http://www.cisco.com/go/workspace_licensing for more information and to determine whether Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing is appropriate for your customer.